Moving Waters

Photographing dead animals is at the very back of my list but coming across the lifeless body of a deer in the surf is such an unusual sight I felt compelled to take a moment. Couldn't say how she came to be there but the long winter couldn't have done her any favors.

 

Amid pale green milkweed, wild clover,

a rotted deer

curled, shaglike,

after a winter so cold

the trees split open.

I think she couldn't keep up with

the others (they had no place

to go) and her food,

frozen grass and twigs,

wouldn't carry her weight.

 

Now from bony sockets,

she stares out on this

cruel luxuriance.

 

-Jim Harrison

Done